Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Thursday May 29, 2008 @11:24AM
from the die-hard-optimist dept.

Ubisoft's Julian Geright is apparently quite confident in the power of the next installment of the Tom Clancy series with Tom Clancy: Endwar. Designed specifically for the PS3 and Xbox 360, Geright hopes that this is a breakthrough for console RTS play similar to Goldeneye's FPS breakout. "This is the first game of its type and I don't think that games on console will be made the same after Endwar, [...] It's kind of boastful, but I really do think that this is a watershed type of game."

And here I thought you were pointing out Modem Wars, which I played on my C=64.. predating the Genesis by a short while.. which.. was.. you know.. at least multiplayer.. and definitely strategy..First few google hits are good information for those of you that never heard of it.TBH, I think the RTS market is really divided into 2 groups; 1 is the Research/Harvest style.. Dune, Warcraft, AoE, etcc.. the 2nd (which I perfer) are games like Ground Control, WiC, Blitzkreig and a few others where you don't have a

Interesting list. I wonder why they didn't include Quake. Was there another game that popularized simple Internet gaming like that? Or did we just magically jump from Doom to Half-Life and Ultima Online? I remember having to get on a BBS to setup Doom games, or even call long distance to go against serious players. Quake was like a completely different world, and now we take that functionality for granted.

I remember years ago a friend challenged me to a game of Command and Conquer on his Playstation.
The initial shock of using a controller instead of a mouse for such a game. Horrible. It just seemed really inefficient. A downgrade if you will.
But the main thing I hated about that game on consoles was split screen multiplayer. I just really didn't see the point whatsoever.
Having your opponent watching your every move. Seeing what you're building. Knowing *exactly* when you're going to attack. It just tak

I got sick of them a long, long time ago. The game that did in preorders forever for me was Master of Orion 3, biggest gaming waste of money ever, and I keep it around as an object lesson. As a result, I don't buy games near release anymore. There are a few exceptions, but very few. (The World Ends With You is the first game I bought day of release since FF12, but even in those cases there were a substantial number of reviews of the Japanese versions that had been released months before)Metacritic isn't

Except Metacritic gives Assassin's Creed a score of 81/100 [metacritic.com]. A game which after completing I gave a 5/10 [beyondthefirsthour.com]. This single game alone has made me lose so much faith in video game critics. The only thing I trust anyone is my friend's word of mouth.

Or maybe, like all people, your tastes are not always perfectly in tune with the rest of the world's. I thought Assassin's Creed was an easy 75/100 at least, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, do not regret the purchase one bit. Sure, it wasn't as OMFG awesome as, say, GTA4 was, but the movement mechanics were novel, the fighting was fun, and the only annoying part was those stupid flag-capturing side missions.

I find Metacritic to be reasonably, er, reasonable when it comes to review scores, for me anyway.

Or maybe, like all people, your tastes are not always perfectly in tune with the rest of the world's.

Or not in tune with reviewers who are told by publishers they can't put up sub 90% reviews before the release date? If you're a reviewer and you got the game early and after playing it, feel the game deserves an 8/10, but if you were to just bump that review up to a 9, you could post your review right now garnering hits and press, would you do it? I wouldn't but there have been many reports of just this situation going on lately. Assassin's Creed is one example.

Which is why you should read the review, not just look at scores. I'm sure most Final Fantasy games score pretty well on there too, but I find that style of gameplay bores me to tears. A quick look at an actual review will show me that despite the good scores, I'm not gonna like it.

From what I've seen, this game is going to be either absolutely amazing or its going to be terrible. It would take a lot for it to be the former but I'm a huge fan of console RTS games so I am truly rooting for it's success.

I don't know, man. When it comes to FPS games, I've always been the first person to come to their defense when a PC elitist would claim that they couldn't be played right on a console. But when it comes to RTS games, I have to concede that I've simply never felt one that played right on the console, and I've played at least a handful of them. They'll have to do something pretty unique to get it to work. Till them, I am the pillar of skepticism.

Actually C&C 3 (on 360 for me) has a really good control scheme provided you use all the hotkeys and shortcuts (just like you must in a PC RTS), the only shortcomings for me were moving the camera around the map. However with various control pad shortcuts that was partially fixed by adding a button that cycles through important happenings and another that puts the camera at the base. While I'm sure that any competent PC player would destroy all but the best console players my point is that the control

This is a modus operandis of a lot of video game publishers. Take a look at Haze for example. There are so many games now being hyped as the next great thing that will redefine their genre, yet few actually deliver on that promise at all. I will definitely have to see it to believe it, no doubt about it.

I suppose they rely a bit too much on previous released information. It seems Voice commands [teamxbox.com] figure heavily into their statement. Personally, I see the controls as being one of the biggest barriers to the RTS genre on consoles. While I find this is an interesting direction, even if it does solve a lot of control issues, they are still only one of many barriers. Then again, maybe I'm just to big of a PC fan to see a revolution...

Second, it's 'innovative' as it uses voice recognition to command troops, so while you can manually tell your little soldiers to run here; kill there - you can also bark at them for the same result, and in fact it will be required. It is a interesting way to bypass the control problems of console RTS.

Hard to tell if it will be good - Tom Clancy has Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, but also Politika.

Imagine a Wii version (of which there doesn't seem to be one). headset, controller, and nunchuck. You are aiming and ducking and weaving all the while shouting commands that are misheard by your troops... All the fun of getting PTSD without leaving home! I'll stick with BioShock and Fear for a bit longer.

Thats all we're going to hear about when this game comes out. Voice recognition is still fairly primitive (let alone voice recognition in video games) and its only going to be made even worse by the complex commands/phrases players will have to learn.

"Flank left! No, the other left! Take cover! Goddamnit, why are you taking cover on the wrong side of the wall!? No, don't throw grenades at your own tanks! Ok, screw this! Go get yourselves killed!"

Because the controllers suck. If a console FPS were anywhere near as easy to play as a PC FPS, you could network them together, and console players would have a fair chance against PC players. It's been done, it's not a fair fight.

You may have a point that younger players are better at using their crappy controllers than us older folks, but given the choice of controllers, keyboard will beat gamepad every time.

Well, I don't really think it's fair to call them "crappy" controllers. Sure, playing an RTS game with a game controller is near impossible. I'll even concede that a FPS game is easier to control with a mouse and keyboard (though I can play one on a console without much trouble), but there are a LOT of genres where the controller works better. Platformers, racing games, third person action games like God of War, and even some third person shooters like Gears of War. Hell, I've played GTA SA on the PC an

Actually, they should have both console and PC in the same multi player. Then after all the PC guys have fragged the crap out of the console people, and the console people catch on, they will switch to PC gaming and the free market would win.

The goal of the controller is to be a fun & ergonomic interface, not necessarily an efficient interface. It is a delicate balance, but frankly it would also be an unfair fight if you allowed people to plug in a special input device which automatically made you invincible and have one-shot kills in an extremely wide radius. Doesn't mean that input device is better and the others suck.I've never seen a strategy game work particularly well with a controller (I liked Ogre Battle 64 but it was way too slow

Aiming is better with a mouse, but movement it way, way better with a thumbstick than it is with a keyboard. Not too relevant for an all-action run&gun game, but if there's a hint of strategy or stealth (eg. sniping in CoD4) fine control really helps expose as little of you as possible. I'm sure you can get suitable sticks for PCs, but not many people seem to use them.

What I don't understand is why more consoles don't come with a keyboard and mouse, given their obvious superiority in these hugely popular genres.

Because the only difference 'twixt console and PC is the interface (especially the Xbox, it's just a legacy-free PC) and they don't want you to know this fact, because then you'll expect to use your console as a PC...

First, a keyboard is inferior to an analogue stick (even if a mouse is superior to one). Second, you can't use a keyboard and mouse on the sofa - console controllers are handheld, keyboard and mouse need a desk. The second really is the killer - are you honestly going to set up a bunch of desks and chairs in the lounge so you and your mates can have a bash at 4-player Warhawk on the big screen?

Am I the only person who finds that this degree of arrogance, particularly in the video game industry, is unfalteringly correlated with horrible failure? John Romero, I'm looking at you. (Among many others)

Aren't the makers of Halo Wars saying the same kinds of things? "Designed specifically for the 360," etc.? I have some serious doubts about anyone being able to pull off a decent RTS on a system without a mouse and keyboard. But please, prove me wrong.

I will say, and this is my opinion only, that if anyone can pull of a successful RTS on the console, it will be the Halo Wars team. The core of their team was responsible for Age of Empires 1 & 2, and they have both superior technology and game design people.

You should try Universe at War: Earth Assault for the xbox 360.I've played LOTS of PC RTS in my life and i can say that playing UaW on the 360 comes PRETTY close to the level of control of a mouse and keyboard.

In it,Everything is accessible from one-level sub-menus. You access the various sub-menus with the triggers and the bumpers. So you never have any multiple menus to open to buid something, like in Battle for Middle Earth 2 or Command in Conquer 3...

Ubisoft's content director, Julian Geright, has claimed that the upcoming Tom Clancy: EndWar game will change the way people will make games on consoles.

"This is the first game of its type and I don't think that games on console will be made the same after Endwar," he said in to CVG. "It's kind of boastful, but I really do think that this is a watershed type of game."

EndWar is a real-time strategy game made specifically for the PS3 and Xbox 360. When asked about other RTS games that have been ported to console platforms, Geright said: "I hate saying bad things about other peoples games, but when EA ships Battle for Middle Earth on PC and then goes 'okay, that's going to take a team of forty/fifty six months to get it out on 360'.

"They can do a really great job in terms of UI, they can great job in mapping the controls and making it accessible, but it remains a PC game. The difference in PC games and console games is huge, even in first person shooters. Think of before GoldenEye - people didn't play first person shooters on console. It wasn't that fun."

More on EndWar as UbiDays kicks into top gear.

So some marketing guy says that this game is going to be uber l33t, and nothing will be the same afterwards. Nothing going to be the same? Reminds me of that old dialog in Ghostbusters:

The big deal with the game seems to be the voice commands. In theory it sounds like a great idea.

But then I just finished Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the most recent Ubisoft/Clancy release. It had a very simple voice command system, and it was almost completely unuseable. Saying "hold" five times before my teammates eventually walk into a crossfire is not an advantage over just hitting the "hold" button.

I even followed the link and RTFA, but I sure couldn't find anything supporting logic behind the claim that this game is somehow special, a breakthrough, or in any way a big deal. The closest to any logical point I could find is that the game wasn't written for a PC and then ported to consoles. But there have been other FPS games before that started on a console, so that's hardly much of a claim. It might indeed be a good game (or not), but you sure can't make that c

This is nothing but a blatent ad. Some guy at a comapny says, "The thing my company makes is awesome!" and that's *it*. There is zero content here? I guess I need to just make up the rest on my own? Ok, fine, "Tom Clancy: Endwar", WILL change the face of RTS gaming... It will be so bad that nobody will ever trust an RTS game to ever be fun again. It will cause heartburn.

If this were any genre but RTS, they could potentially do such a thing, (I'm not saying they would, but I wouldn't call it impossible).

But RTS? RTS's are a perfect example of a genre that is best fit for the PC. For games like FPS's the console does have one advantage (though im not saying it makes up for other disadvantages), namely, that it has 2 good 2D pointing devices, whereas the PC has one excellent one(mouse), and one terrible one(D keys). Unless his new RTS is 3d (control wise) the consoles only

I've had a 360 for about a year now and I still prefer the mouse and keyboard interface though I concede that the thumbsticks are far better for a "lean back on the couch and play casually" control scheme. I'm impressed with the complexity of control scheme that can be worked into all those buttons and triggers.

That being said, I still like mouse and keyboard more for serious shooters and strategy games. I tried out the demo for Universe at War. I'm impressed with the level of control they worked into the thumbsticks but it still ultimately feels extremely cumbersome and counter-intuitive. Click and drag with a mouse, right click, bang a few keys on the keyboard, all seems more natural.

I'll give the demo a whirl and see what it's like. I gave up on Universe at War because I thought of what the uglier battles were like in classics like Total Annihilation and realized that the cumbersome interface would make me through a controller through the TV when things got heated and serious.

short answer: Nolong answer: its very unlikely that a single game will define a genre these days. Sure the magazines will jump on bandwagons about half-life 2, halo, etc, but thats just because they want to sell copies.half-life => nothing newfable => nothing newhalo => nothing newhalf-life 2 => nothing newif anything interesting happens in gaming its definatly on the fringes, the mods, and the single purpose games. Stuff like Natural selection(RTS,FPS,RPG), cube2 (where you modify levels during

Actually, Half-life did do something new. It had a story line. It was the first FPS that did that and a great in-depth one at that. It really was a fundamental shift in how FPS's were done and what was expected from them from that point forward. And Half-life 2 was a great continuation of that.

Um, did you ever play quake? If I remember right (and it has been a rather long time) Quake was the first FPS to have no plot at all whatsoever, not even alluded to in the manual. There was no opening cutscene, no text of any form at any point in the game, and in fact the start of the game was somewhat unique because instead of having you select difficulty from a menu, they instead dropped you into a room with 3 portals, one for each difficulty.Wolfenstien had a plot. "Escape from castle Wolfenstien, and

Doom and Quake had one too, which of course doesn't mean that either of those storylines was good. And when it comes to real storylines DarkForces still beats HalfLife any day and there is of course also stuff like SystemShock. The new thing that HalfLife did wasn't really the story, since it really didn't have much of that either, the new thing was the presentation, you no longer had levels or missions screens, but instead everything happened in the game engine itself, the whole game, including intro, was